ReveNews
Cell Phones: The Cigarette Lighters of This Century?
I saw Elvis Costello last Saturday night at the Wiltern LG in Los Angeles. The show was amazing. Elvis played for 2 hours and 40 minutes non-stop.
At one point late in the show in what usually would have been the 3rd or 4th encore, 4 people in the front held up lighters. You remember how that was widespread in from the ’60s through the ’80s. At least in LA, that has stopped as people just don’t smoke cigarettes as much and aren’t allowed to smoke anything in theaters.
The interesting part is that throughout the show, I saw people holding up cell phones. They looked to be doing the “lighter tribute”. (I also saw a few people use them to find seat numbers just as lighters used to be used.) Of course while it looked that way from behind, that’s not what it looked like from the stage. People were simply taking pictures.
I don’t get it. How good will a picture from a cell phone be at that distance in a dark theater? Maybe I should give it a try next time especially since I carry two phone with cameras on them (a novelty at best).
It’s just another sign of changing times. Will my children understand why I still love Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone? Will they understand why we say “dial” a phone?
Cell phone have done more than simply change where we talk. Cell phone have been banned from health clubs because people use those same cameras to invade the privacy of others. Then there is the issue of what images people download onto their cameras.
While the music industry (yeah, I still call them record labels even though neither word applies anymore) was hurt by the Internet, it is thriving due to ringer downloads.
It makes you think…
[Note: Elvis Costello’s first album, My Aim Is True was released in 1977.]
